Stars
by ZScalantian
Summary: It takes Idril some time to realize Eärendil has never seen real stars. Silmarillion Space AU, before the Fall of Gondolin


It takes Idril some time to realize Eärendil has never seen real stars.

When he was an infant, she would lay him in his crib and press the switch that turned the ceiling to a projection of a night sky. The baby cooed at the holographic fire above him, the blazing nebulas and wheeling galaxies, all rotating in their programmed orbits. It was not a real sky, or even an image of a real sky. It was a toy, software to entertain a child.

When their son was older, and could stay up later, she and Tuor took him with them out at night. Eärendil would lay his curly head on his father's shoulder as Tuor held him, the boy stealing sleepy glances upwards at the projected sky glittering on the shell of their small world. Most of the time, the program imitates the gold and silver lights of their homeworld, but her people love the stars. For a few hours every day, the cemeglass barrier displays the black image of the space around them. The stars on the false sky burn no less bright than the child's mobile in her son's room, but their patterns are steadier and slower. Still, it is only an image, a video feed.

When she realized that her son was six years old and had never seen a real sky, she was shocked. She thought of all kinds of excuses - she has become so used to living inside this glass bauble that its projected sky no longer seems strange to her; she has always been busy with affairs of government and is now busier than ever, overseeing the secret creation of the Way of Escape and hiding its financing in odd corners of the budget; she was born in the light of Aman and lived her own childhood with the stars only as a story, the masterwork of Varda, dimly seen in the evening, east beyond the mountains. Most of all, her mind is increasingly clouded with vague threats and worries she cannot put a name to. In the face of the strange, insubstantial premonitions that plague her, small details like this slip her mind more often now.

They are excuses, not reasons, and she knows them for what they are. She and Tuor, her father Turgon, and Voronwe, Meleth and Hendor, all the largest figures in her son's young life… one of them should have realized by now that for a boy who loves stars, Eärendil has never seen real ones.

She makes time in her schedule the next day, delegating meetings and canceling a check-in with the foremen of the Secret Way. She, her husband, and Voronwë borrow Eärendil from his lessons, much to the boy's delight. They take a flyer across the city - the palace and associated government buildings are in the center of the colony, and it is too long a walk for a boy's short legs out to the curving wall of the world.

They enter a shuttle that takes them through the seven-layered barrier that is Gondolin's outer shell, and while Tuor and Voronwë entertain Eärendil with stories of sea journeys and space odysseys, Idril murmurs strings of passwords to the thin air, knowing the security programs will pick up her voice even through the enthusiastic talk of her family.

They disembark at the Gate containing the launches for the House of the Heavenly Arch, which came off tour last week, and will not go on again until next month. There are only a few members of the deck crew about, and Idril has already spoken to Egalmoth about her little trip. She does not worry that the crew will stop her. They wave to her son, and he waves gaily back, chattering happily about the sleek lines of the fighting ships and the beauty of their emblazoned crests, shining in jewel tones.

They reach the airlocks, the personnel ones, meant to be used by crew members to reach the outer mechanisms of the launch bay doors. Idril taps a security code into the wall console, then enters their sizes in answer to its prompt, and it obliges her with a hum. An opening appears in the white wall, revealing two adult spacesuits and one in a child's size. She and Tuor suit up in studied motions that speak less of grace than of practice. Voronwë, as befits an experienced sailor, is quicker than they, and despite Eärendil's excited wriggling, he has the boy outfitted before his parents are done with all their snaps and buckles.

Idril takes her son's hand, and Tuor takes the other. Voronwë hits the door button, and the portal to the airlock opens with a hiss.

Wife, husband, and son step through, and the sailor seals the door again behind them. Voronwë wishes to stay inside, and Idril does not blame him. If she had nearly suffocated out in the endless emptiness of space, and only been saved by a literal miracle, she would be hesitant herself to return there.

She helps Eärendil put his helmet on, "just like a real sailor!", and then goes to find the tethers. Tuor corrals their son, who is jumping up and down before the airlock's door, and holds him still while Idril clips the tether to his suit. She gives it a yank to test its fastness, then hands Tuor his own. Tuor picks Eärendil up to wave goodbye to Voronwë, who waves back through the small window, while Idril attaches the last tether to her own suit.

She puts her helmet on, the seal forming with a rubbery gasp, and tastes the slightly stale air it begins to pump out. The staleness gradually fades as she examines the readouts on the inside of the faceplate, checking seals and oxygen levels and pressure and comm links. Tuor checks his own, and they both coach Eärendil through the pre-walk checklist. Everything is in order, or seems to be, and Idril moves to the wall-plate that, with a tap and a voice command, will open the airlock to the vast beyond.

She grins with giddy anticipation - their first spacewalk as a family; that's not a milestone she'd ever dreamed of as a girl in Tirion! - and opens the lock.

She has barely a moment to acclimate to the changed gravity before Tuor roars, startling her, and scoops up she and Eärendil in his brawny arms, leaping out the door with them. Eärendil screams in wild delight, her headset automatically lowering the volume until it is at a level safe for elven hearing, and Idril hears herself laughing too, full, deep-throated laughter. They tumble through space, her faceplate a glowing smear of somersaulting stars, until they reach the end of the tethers and are brought to an abrupt halt. The shock of it is absorbed by their suits, and now they float, weightless and free. (Idril is amused to note that Tuor's cannonball leap has changed their vertical, so they are now floating upside down relative to their prior orientation.)

Here they are now, surrounded by stars. Gondolin is hidden in the center of a solar cluster, just one small pinprick of light drowned out by a thousand blazing torches to any scans that pass over the area. Idril's breath catches at the beauty of it. Tuor is quiet too, and surprisingly, so is Eärendil. She glances at his image, down in the corner of her display. His mouth is open in an 'O' of wonder, and reflected starfire gleams in his sapphire eyes. "Wow," he whispers finally, and Idril's mouth curves at the innocence of that understatement.

"Wow," she whispers back.


End file.
